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Leap of Faith

By on February 29, 2012

Today is Leap Day February 29 when scientists compensate for the fact that there are really 365 and 1/4 days in the year. That means it takes the earth that long to make a circle around the sun. The number is actually 365.242222, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds, but who’s counting?

This has absolutely nothing to do with Health Care, but I will not be able to write something on Leap Day for another four years so why pass up the opportunity. Dinah Shore, the popular singer and early TV personality was born on February 29. So was motivational speaker Tony Robbins (he shows up a lot at 3 AM on cable) and actor Antonio Sabato, Jr., the king of direct-to-DVD movies. Rossini who wrote The William Tell Overture is perhaps the most famous Leaper. On regular or ‘common’ years, they all get to celebrate their birthdays on February 28 or March 1. Except Rossini who is dead and has stopped celebrating. In China the day must be the 28th. OK, so Dinah isn’t celebrating either.

Dinah

 

Sabato

Robbins

I had a great-aunt who was a Leap Day baby (Leaper.) She jokingly counted her age as advancing every four years. She lived to be almost 23 by her count. She campaigned in her youth as a suffragette. She wore a corset she used to take off on hot days and put in a large porcelain bowl in the center of her dining room table. You could always tell at dinner if she thought it had been a hot day.

Columbus awaiting eclipse

I skimmed the internet for great events that happened on February 29, but didn’t come up with much. Lord of the Rings won Best Movie at the Oscars on February 29, 2004 at the then Kodak, now Nothing, Theater.  New York City Mayor Koch called Reagan a “WIMP” in the war on drugs on Leap Day 1988. The First Playboy Club opened on this date in 1960. Gone with the Wind won Best Picture in 1940, with Hattie McDaniel winning the first oscar given to an African-American. Baseball pitcher “Big Ed” Morris died on this date in 1932. I didn’t know Big Ed. Supposedly Columbus scared the indians with a solar eclipse that occurred on Leap Day in 1504.

I vote the day to Hattie who was great in everything she was allowed to do.

There are many different calendars in the world and none of them agree on how to handle this 1/4 day problem. In the Gregorian calendar, that’s us, we get an extra day every four years, except when the year is divisible by 100, then we don’t, unless of course the year is divisible by 1000 when we do. There are Leapers from 2000.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that scientists are working on a uniform calendar for each year. Lots a luck. In this country we have never agreed on when life begins, so how can we expect the world to agree on a matter as straightforward as the start of a new year.

Tom Godfrey

 

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